Beautiful Gravel Garden

Our front garden is tiny… but generated plenty of work when it was just grass. We spent at least an hour a week from March until November mowing and edging just to keep it looking neat. That’s about 40 weeks so it’s likely that we spent around 40 hours a year looking after it. Now that wouldn’t be so bad if it was our only garden but it isn’t. Other areas of our garden need attention too.

After two years we’d had enough. We’d spent over 80 hours mowing and trimming and finally cracked. Yes I know… we were very slow to catch on!
A trip to Beth Chattos famous gravel garden inspired me. If she could build a beautiful garden on an old car park then surely we could do something here on this tiny plot.
In October 2005 we removed the turf and dug over the soil. We added good garden compost and planted around 100 tiny plants then topped it with golden gravel.
The plants established their roots over autumn and winter of 2005 and burst into growth in the spring of 2006.

Here’s the Gravel Garden on 12th May 2006

And here it is again on 12th July 2006… Yes that’s right just two months later!

Since then we had to do very little to keep it looking good. A major tidy up in early spring each year means pruning and removing any weeds and takes about two hours.
I reckon we’ve saved ourselves about 8 weeks of work over the past eight years and that’s brilliant news. And what’s more it’s always full of wildlife… we’ve had ducks nesting by the front door, wild birds eating aphids, butterflies sipping nectar and bees collecting pollen. It’s a vibrant, warm and welcoming place now. Exactly what I wanted.

Isn’t it great when a plan comes together?   See you next time. Gillian